King Solomon's Mines eBook

Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a
stiff place, and I feel as though I were bogged up
to the axle. But, “sutjes, sutjes,”
as the Boers say—­I am sure I don’t
know how they spell it—­softly does it.
A strong team will come through at last, that is, if
they are not too poor. You can never do anything
with poor oxen. Now to make a start.

I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman,
make oath and say—­ That’s how I headed
my deposition before the magistrate about poor Khiva’s
and Ventvoegel’s sad deaths; but somehow it doesn’t
seem quite the right way to begin a book. And,
besides, am I a gentleman? What is a gentleman?
I don’t quite know, and yet I have had to do
with niggers —­no, I will scratch out that
word “niggers,” for I do not like it.
I’ve known natives who are, and so you
will say, Harry, my boy, before you have done with
this tale, and I have known mean whites with lots
of money and fresh out from home, too, who are not.

At any rate, I was born a gentleman, though I have
been nothing but a poor travelling trader and hunter
all my life. Whether I have remained so I known
not, you must judge of that. Heaven knows I’ve
tried. I have killed many men in my time, yet
I have never slain wantonly or stained my hand in
innocent blood, but only in self-defence. The
Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant
us to defend them, at least I have always acted on
that, and I hope it will not be brought up against
me when my clock strikes. There, there, it is
a cruel and a wicked world, and for a timid man I
have been mixed up in a great deal of fighting.
I cannot tell the rights of it, but at any rate I
have never stolen, though once I cheated a Kafir out
of a herd of cattle. But then he had done me
a dirty turn, and it has troubled me ever since into
the bargain.

Well, it is eighteen months or so ago since first
I met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good. It was
in this way. I had been up elephant hunting beyond
Bamangwato, and had met with bad luck. Everything
went wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the
fever badly. So soon as I was well enough I trekked
down to the Diamond Fields, sold such ivory as I had,
together with my wagon and oxen, discharged my hunters,
and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending
a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged
me at the hotel, and having seen everything there
was to see, including the botanical gardens, which
seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the
country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I
expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to
go back to Natal by the Dunkeld, then lying
at the docks waiting for the Edinburgh Castle
due in from England. I took my berth and went
aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers from
the Edinburgh Castle transhipped, and we weighed
and put to sea.